Now I can rest, now I can slip away into the grey distance… wonderful) Maddening pains jerk me back into consciousness. Is someone pulling me about?… Are we jolting over rough ground? Now it is over… At last I sink utterly into the arms of silence…
When I wake up, everything around me is white… intent faces… a pungent smell… I am lying on an operating table. A sudden, violent panic convulses me: where is my leg?
“Is it gone?”
The surgeon nods. Spinning downhill on brand new skis… diving… athletics… pole jumping… what do these things matter? How many comrades have been far more seriously wounded? Do you remember… that one in the hospital at Dnjepropetrovsk whose whole face and both hands had been torn off by a mine? The loss of a leg, an arm, a head are all of no importance if only the sacrifice could save the fatherland from its mortal peril… this is no catastrophe, the only catastrophe is that I cannot fly for weeks… and in the present crisis! These thoughts flash through my brain in a second, and now the surgeon says to me gently:
“I couldn’t do anything else. Except for a few scraps of flesh and some fibrous tissue there was nothing there, so I had to amputate.”
If there was nothing there, I think to myself with a wry humor, how could he amputate? Well, of course, it is all in the day’s work for him.
“But why is your other leg in plaster of Paris?” he asks in astonishment.
“Since last November—where am I here?”
“At the Waffen S.S. main. dressing station at Selow.”
“Oh, at Selow!” That is less than five miles behind the front. So I evidently flew north-north-west, not west.
“Waffen S.S. soldiers brought you in and one of our M.O.s performed the operation. You have another wounded man on your conscience,” he adds with a smile.
“Did I by any chance bite the surgeon?”
“You didn’t go as far as that,” he says shaking his head. “No, you didn’t bite him, but a Pilot Officer Koral tried to land with a Fieseler Storch on the spot where you crashed. But it must have been difficult, for he pancaked… and now he, too, has his head swathed in bandages!”
Good old Coral! It seems as if when I was flying sub consciously I had more than one guardian angel Meanwhile the Reichsmarschall has sent his personal doctor with instructions to bring me back at once to the bomb-proof hospital in the Zoo bunker, but the surgeon who operated will not hear of it because I have lost too much blood. It will be all right tomorrow.
The Reichsmarschall’s doctor tells me that Goering immediately reported the incident to the Führer. Hitler, he says, was very glad that I had got off so lightly.
“Of course, if the chickens want to be wiser than the hen,” he is reported to have said among other things. I am relieved that no mention has been made of his veto on my flying. I also believe that in view of the desperate struggle in which the whole situation has been involved in the last few weeks my continuance in action is accepted as a matter of course.
The next day I am moved into the Zoo bunker, sited below the heaviest A.A. guns aiding in the defense of the capital against the allied attacks on the civil population. On the second day there is a telephone on my bedside table; I must be able to communicate with my wing about operations, the situation, etc. I know that I shall not be on my back for long and I do not want to lose my command and therefore I am anxious to be kept informed of everything in detail and participate in my unit’s every activity even if I can only be kept informed and participate by telephone. The doctors and the nurses whose care of me is touching are, in this respect at least, not overpleased with their new patient. They keep on saying something about “rest.”
Almost every day I am visited by colleagues from the unit or by other friends, some of them people who call themselves my friends in order to force a way into my sickroom. When those who “crash” my sickroom are pretty girls they open their eyes wide and raise their eyebrows interrogatively when they see my wife sitting at my bedside. “Did you ever?” as the Berliner would say.
I have already had a professional discussion about an artificial limb; if only I had made that much recovery. I am impatient and fidgeting to get up. A little later I wangle a visit from a maker of artificial limbs. I ask him to make me a provisional artificial leg with which I can fly even if the stump is not yet healed. Several first class firms refuse on the grounds that it is too soon.
One accepts the order if only as an experiment. At all events he sets about it so energetically that he almost makes me dizzy. He sets the whole of my thigh up to the groin in plaster of Paris without first greasing it or fitting a protective cap. After letting it dry he remarks laconically:
“Think of something nice!”
At the same moment he wrenches with all his strength at the hard plaster of Paris cap in which the hairs of my body are embedded and tears it off. I think the world is falling in. The fellow has missed his vocation, he would have made an excellent blacksmith.
My 3rd Squadron and the Wing staff have meanwhile moved to Görlitz where I went to school. My parents’ home is just nearby. The Russians are at this moment fighting their way into the village; Soviet tanks are driving across the playgrounds of my youth. I could go mad to think of it. My family, like many millions, must long since have become refugees, able to save nothing but their bare lives. I lie condemned to inactivity. What have I done to deserve this? I must not think of it.
Flowers and presents of every kind are proof of the people’s affection for their soldiers; every day they are delivered to my room. Besides the Reichsmarschall, Minister Göbbels whom I did not before know visits me twice. A conversation with him is very interesting. He asks my opinion of the purely strategic situation in the east.
“The Oder front,” I tell him, “is our last chance of holding the Soviets; beyond that I see none, for with it the capital falls too.”
But he compares Berlin with Leningrad. He points out that it did not fall because all its citizens made every house a fortress. And what Leningrad could do the population of Berlin could surely help him to do. His idea is to achieve the highest degree of organization for a house to house defense by installing wireless sets in every building. He is convinced that “his Berliners” would prefer death to falling victims to the Red hordes.
How seriously he meant this his end was afterwards to prove.
“From a military point of view I see it differently,” I reply. “Once the battle for Berlin is joined after the Oder front is broken I think it is absolutely impossible that Berlin can be held. I would remind you that the comparison between the two cities is not admissible. Leningrad has the advantage of being protected on the west by the Gulf of Finland and on the east by Lake Ladoga. There was only a weak and narrow Finnish front to the north of it. The only real chance of capturing it was from the south, but on that side Leningrad was strongly fortified and could make use of an excellent system of prepared positions; also it was never entirely cut off from its supply line. Lighters could cross Lake Ladoga in the summer and in winter they laid railway lines over the ice and so were able to feed the city from the north.” My arguments fail to convince him.
In a fortnight I am up for a short while for the first time and am able to enjoy a little fresh air. During the allied air attacks